Last month, the Financial Times ran an excellent editorial about government and business activities that exhibit the Great Leap Forward syndrome.
The author, economist John Kay, uses the example of Mao Tse-Tung's attempt to restructure China's economic base to illuminate why large-scale software projects also, often end in failure.
"Great Leap Forward syndrome begins with an aspiration to remedy serious past failure with unprecedented future success...." he writes. "...In a Great Leap Forward, the wish is father to the thought. There is no recognition that past failure means that future success will be hard to achieve."
It's a short column but one that, in the second to last paragraph, effectively makes the case for an agile approach.
No comments:
Post a Comment